a year and a half in limbo after a decade under the influence

Now

Do I look old?
I look in the mirror and try to evaluate.
But the chasm of one’s twenties is just that… a chasm. Cut my hair exactly like it was when I was 21. Why wouldn’t I look the same? Everyone in their twenties could be anywhere in their twenties.
…right?
And maybe I do (still look like I’m 21)… but how could I tell?
And maybe that’s my answer.
But there’s more to this story than I’ve let on.

Cause and effect. Action and reaction. —- and consequence.

There are markers… indicators… flags that go off.
I know that the years have passed since then. Memory tells me that I’ve lived a relative ‘hard-life’. Well, you know, shooting cocaine in my Chelsea crack-shack (before becoming a full-time ice junkie, of course). Drinking the sickly amount of alcohol that I needed to to obtain a balance…. Eating sparsely then possibly doing a “food-free day until after work (at the job at the salad joint)… small salad I looked at, no fat as I waited for the guy to arrive with my crystalyne savior)…

…and there he was. Ate the salad (arugula, capers, grape tomatoes, portabello mushrooms, balsamic vinegar… fennel sometimes came into play), gently, like through a stick of butter, eased the purest… thinnest… sharpest … virginal of needles through my basilic vein.

And in addition to being okay… in addition to my methamphetamine dreams… it was no big deal, easy, even to throw up the aforementioned salad before venturing out to dissolve into Manhattan.

Intellectually, I know all of what has happened.
Then and now.
There’s all this talk of dehydration affecting your face (wrinkles and all)… hydrate, limit your alcohol consumption, alpha omega 3 fatty acids.
Yeah, I know.
But only some of these behaviours have improved (if not ceased to exist themselves). I don’t shoot or snort meth (I swallow it in a extended release pill that a doctor prescribes me)… I continue to remain dehydrated

But, in the end… it’s all about your face.
I’ve been a drug addict for atleast a decade. I’ve been an active drug (and a mean, needles and veins and 4-methylaminorex and cocaine with a touch of dilaudid) user for maybe 4/5the’s of that time. And a default alcoholic, I suppose 100% of that time…
And an mild, tried and true functioning alcoholic now.